Hi informer,
To address your points one by one:
You claim that men go to lap dancing clubs "just to see them dance, flirt and change their clothes". How do you know what happens in lap dancing clubs? I'm more inclined to take the word of someone who used to work in one. Here's a quote from a former lap dancer interviewed by Object!:
'If a woman?s boyfriend is off to a strip club, she may act liberal about it. She probably imagines it will simply involve him watching another woman take her clothes off. Of course if that same woman knew that her boyfriend was actually going to be allowing a woman to touch him, put her breasts in his face, show him her vagina while she fingered it, maybe even let him finger her, put her face in his crotch, gyrate against him until he came etc. . . suddenly she might not feel so liberal about it'.
"thats roughly £115,000 after tax and you're fit."
I'd be interested to hear where you got the figure that lap dancers earn a high salary. This is what a lap dancer interviewed by Object! says:
?Lap dancers don?t have employment rights like anyone else. They are self employed so they aren?t paid a wage. They don?t get holiday pay or sick pay, all the other things which people are entitled to in other jobs. Instead they work like prostitutes, they only get money if they get a man?.
Dancers must buy their own ? often expensive - clothes and shoes which management have to approve and have to pay a hefty upfront fee to the club for being there, with the owners taking a cut (between 10 and 25%, according to Object!) of earnings.
What do I earn? £27,000 per annum. What is the relevance here?
You also ask "What kind of people go...? guys on coming of age nights like 18,21 and stag nights...The others are harmless lonely guys who just want some female company".
All kinds of men go to lap dancing clubs, including married men, and I certainly wouldn't describe them as harmless. I have two reasons for saying this.
Firstly, the Lilith Study (2003) reports that in areas around lap dancing clubs, rates of rape go up 50% and rates of sexual assault go up 57%.
Secondly, according to a former prostitute interviewed by Object!,
'...there were also minicabs that would then pick up punters from the lapdancing clubs and bring them to the sauna . . . These punters (the guys coming from lap dancing clubs) would be some of the worst (customers). There was a very aggressive ?pack mentality? and they would often be very rude and would be grabbing, slapping and touching us in the main seating area . . They invariably asked for group sex, it seemed important for them to have sex in front of their friends. I think that the fact that the men had come from the lap-dancing clubs meant that they had already stopped seeing us as human or individual. They would pick out women one after another to try out, to swap over and to score in terms of ?performance?. The overwhelming feeling that I got was that they really hated us?.
"its not exploitative given woemn earning like £20 a dance". As for whether the women are exploited, here another lap dancer states that:
'I began to frequently have arguments with the customers. They would touch me and grab me and one even bit me during a dance. I did not feel safe. I also felt ashamed to be working in the club and thought to myself if someone attacked me in here or when I walked home no court would prosecute the attacker, people would say that I deserved it. I hated myself and everyone else in there but felt trapped'.
So sorry but you have nowhere near persuaded me that this club will be harmless. I live in Haringey because I like being able to walk home safely at night, all evidence suggests this will change of groups of drink, sexually aroused men are roaming the streets of my community.